this is my place, filled with things I love

from the trunk: on a greyhound bus

Introducing a new series at gracetopia, which will be updated more-or-less whenever I feel like it.

Remember yesterday when I mentioned the novel I had worked on for 5 years and then trunked? (to trunk=writertalk for “to put away and never look at again because oh god what was I thinking?”)

This is from one of the versions of that. Our hero is 15-year-old Joanna.

When Jo awoke, her bus seemed to be somewhere in Southern California, or possibly Arizona. The scenery was extremely monotonous, all sagebrush and desert and boredom. She fiddled with her cd player for a few minutes, discovered that it was out of batteries, and banished it to her backpack on the next seat. Having nothing better to do, she scrunched her jacket against the window and tried to go back to sleep.

Directly behind her, the baby who had gotten on the bus in Albequerque with its mother began crying again. The mother tried unsuccessfully to shush it. Jo heard her fiddling with bags and such, then a few seconds later something hit the back of Jo’s foot. She discovered a bottle on the floor under her. She picked it up and got to her knees on the seat, turning to hand it back.

“Thank you,” said the very flustered-looking woman behind her. She looked like she was in her early twenties, with a pleasant plumpness and tired eyes. She held the baby—maybe six or seven months old—awkwardly, as though she weren’t used to babies. When she tried to take the bottle from Jo, the baby let out a shriek and grabbed the woman’s face.

dun dun DUN!

Tune in next when—the baby grabs the woman’s BOOB!

No but seriously. I swear I write much better now. Sometimes I even change the order of verbs and nouns in my sentences! And, like, actual interesting things happen. Really.